undle on the table and approached the prisoner.

"Stefani Gregor, look up; it is I!" He drummed on his chest like a
challenging gorilla. "I, Boris Karlov!"

Slowly the eyelids of the prisoner went up, revealing mild blue eyes.
But almost instantly the mildness was replaced by an agate hardness, and
the body became upright.

"Yes, it is Boris, whom you betrayed. But I escaped by a hair, Stefani;
and we meet again."

What good to tell this poor madman that Stefani Gregor had not betrayed
him, that he had only warned those marked for death? There was no longer
reason inside that skull. To die, probably in a few moments. So be it.
Had he not been ready for seven years? But that poor boy--to have come
all these thousands of miles, only to walk into a trap! Had he found
that note? Had they killed him? Doubtless they had or Boris Karlov would
not be in this room.

"We killed him to-night, Stefani, in your rooms. We threw out the food
so he would have to seek something to eat. The last of that breed, stem
and branch! We are no longer the mud; we ourselves are the heels. We are
conquering the world. Today Europe is ours; to-morrow, America!"

A wintry little smile stirred the lips of the man in the chair. America,
with its keen perceptions of the ridiculous, its withering humour!

"No more the dissolute opera dancers will dance to your fiddling,
Stefani, while we starve in the town. Fiddler, valet, tutor, the rivers
and seas of Russia are red. We roll east and west, and our emblem
is red. Stem and branch! We ground our heels in their faces as for
centuries they ground theirs in ours. He escaped us there--but I was
Nemesis. He died to-night."

The body in the chair relaxed a little. "He was clean and honest, Boris.
I made him so. He would have done fine things if you had let him live."

"That breed?"

"Why, you yourself loved him when he was a boy!"

"Stem and branch! I loved my little sister Anna, too. But what did they
do to her behind those marble walls? Did you fiddle for her? What was
she when they let her go? My pretty little Anna! The fires of hell
for those damned green stones of yours, Stefani! She heard of them and
wanted to see them, and you promised."

"I? I never promised Anna! ... So that was it? Boris, I only saw her
there. I never knew what brought her. But the boy was in England then."

"The breed, the breed!" roared the squat man. "Ha, but you should have
seen! Those gay officers and their damned